Making Budget Cuts Great Again

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Finally, a president who loves America enough to ditch elderly shut-ins, poor kids, and 20 million starving people!

As the Trump administration’s budget proposal clearly demonstrates, a famine in far-off Africa is no longer our problem. It ain’t called a skinny budget for nothing, people. This thing is positively emaciated, and it’s gorgeous. And it’s just what this country needs to be great, at last: Guns, not butter; rock hard power, not namby-pamby diplomacy; a big, beautiful wall, not heating help for poor people, after-school programs, scientific research, the arts, toxic waste cleanups, and relief supplies.

The wimps who get that stuff have been take-take-taking from this nation long enough. Cut ‘em loose! Maybe then, the long-suffering wealthy, the real heroes of once-glorious America, unconstrained by burdensome taxes and regulations, can set about trickling down their greatness upon the rest of us.

Around here, the unpatriotic mayor of Boston and the egghead governor have been trying to hold us back. Charlie Baker whined like a silly liberal about cuts to heating assistance, and to the National Institutes of Health, which sends about $1.7 billion a year to fund research central to the state’s economy. Toughen up, gov!

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Mayor Marty Walsh was apoplectic about the proposal, calling it reckless and heartless. He said it would devastate after-school programs, Meals on Wheels for elderly people, and home-heating aid for 20,000 low income Bostonians. Hey, as budget chief Mick Mulvaney pointed out on Thursday, you’re welcome to replace the lost millions yourself, bud.

How refreshing Mulvaney was. At last, we have leaders who will hold their positions, unmoved by pathetic considerations like morality, cratering approval ratings, and the sucker-punching of their own voters.

There’s no evidence after-school programs, or any of the other things funded by the federal grants being slashed, actually work, Mulvaney said. (Traitorous types pointed out that elderly people eating and kids being kept safe after school are actually signs that things are working, but really, how do we know? Oh sure, there are studies, but science is bunk.)

You want compassion? This budget drips with it, Mulvaney suggested, in the form of the money it doesn’t ask people for. In Great America, keeping taxes down is the kindest thing you can do. Even if it means some old man in Hyde Park goes without food and human contact so we can afford more immigration raids. Take one for the team, gramps!

When asked about the proposal to slash UN funding during a hunger crisis, Mulvaney did not bother with time-consuming justifications. “We’re absolutely reducing funding,” he said. “That should come as a surprise to no one who watched the campaign.” Next!

How can you not love these guys? How I long to be just like them. No, son, I won’t be buying groceries this week. There’s no evidence feeding you produces results. Let’s see some compassion for the other half of this equation, which would be me.

People are saying that the president’s budget is going nowhere, that Congress calls the shots on spending. But with budgets, as with the noodle jewelry my kid gives me at Christmas, and which he’ll be eating now, it’s the thought that counts. And the thought here is: Smash government to smithereens!

People are also saying GOP proposals hurt the very voters who put the president in the Oval Office. Trump himself seemed to concede that point in an interview last week. Clearly, he’s not worried it will hurt him come election time (if election time comes).

That’s called having the courage of his convictions. As in, the conviction that his voters will excuse anything, no matter how heinous.